I don’t know Robin Winkler. Oh, I know that he’s a bit unusual (not many foreigners work for Taiwan’s EPA, nor any other part of Taiwan’s government, for that matter). But besides that, I wouldn’t know him from Adam.
I also don’t know if what he said recently was true, that the EPA here is too cozy with business, and that the EPA regards members of his committee as "enemies".
But I do know that the EPA is over-reacting to what he said:
The administration said that Winkler’s comment was untrue and damaged its reputation. It vowed to seek legal action if Winkler did not clarify [ie: apologize for] his statement.
This is a relatively inconsequential story, ’bout a guy belonging to a government bureaucracy, criticizing that bureaucracy. Could be he’s right on the money; could be he’s full of beans. The response however – threats of libel or slander suits – is a perfect illustration of one of the greatest internal threats to democracy facing Taiwan. There can be no progress without criticism of the way things currently are, and there can be no criticism without people who are willing to step forward and do the criticizin’. Toss around a few multi-million NT dollar libel suits, and most people will learn to keep just as silent as if they’d been tossed into a political prison on Green Island.
Heck, in a face-based society like Taiwan, even the prospect of a one-NT-dollar-fine-and-print-an-apology-in-ten-major-newspapers type-punishment could have a major chilling effect on free speech because of the humiliation involved. Add to this the possibility of future partisan control over the judiciary, and political parties here might one day find themselves locked out of debate as they currently are in Singapore.
To paraphrase Ludwig von Mises, if the Taiwanese want to hold onto their democracy, they must resist the temptation to call the police every time they hear something they find objectionable.